I had my Biopsy 2 1/2 months ago from the date I had my PET scan which showed up SUV intake of 4.2. Wouldn't 2 1/2 months be plenty time for the biopsy site to heal since it was quite small? It seems from what I read 3 months is plenty time for there not to be any uptake? Advice on this please. I'm having biopsy on area in two weeks, but just really concerned. The CT showed no mass, but the PET lit up, so I hope that is in my favor.
Thank you

SUV intake is not a diagnostic took but just an indicator that it may need further attention. Even extreme tensing from anxiety can lock muscles and create suspicious activity. Healing is also impacted by stress and anxiety.

By 8 weeks some say the PET/CT is 90% accurate, after treatment, Four months is even better, and by a year it's 100% accurate. Anything over an SUV of 2.0 is suspicious for cancer, but other factors are considered, such as surgery, inflammation, infection, treatment etc, and as Uptown said, needs further attention, and like your doctors are doing. I had uptake in the lymph node on my right side, 1.3, and tongue 3.1, most likely due to an incisional biopsy done on the tongue a month earlier, and had a negative nodal FNAB. In the same scan a left node was with an SUV of 1.6 that was postitive for cancer with an FNAB on follow-p. A PET/CT scan can detect cancer as small as 5mm. A CT scan can go as low as 1cm. I had an MRI that didn't pick up cancer, but a PET/CT did.

Good luck.

According to my surgeon who did his fellowship at MSKCC, he said the phrase was something like Simply Useless Value.

He explained there are many other indicators besides SUV that indicate if something on PET/CT is actually neoplastic.

I think we here attach more importance to SUV than is likely warranted but we have very little training to understand the other indicators we sort of cling to this one.

Of course very high and low SUV values are far more predictive, I just think that range of 3-9 give or take is not very conclusive either way.